ABROAD AT HOME

ABROAD AT HOME; What Is a Man Profited?

By Anthony Lewis

Published: October 27, 1988

BOSTON—
Thirty-eight years ago an American politician sought power by a campaign of character assassination. Joe McCarthy had great success playing cynically to public fears. Truth and decency eventually caught up with him, but not before he did lasting damage to our institutions.

In 1988, George Bush has run a campaign of character assassination. It has been cynical, and by all signs highly successful. What remains is to calculate the lasting damage to the country - and to Mr. Bush.

In image, George Bush is no Joe McCarthy. He comes on as a straight arrow, not a bully. The dirty work is left to his handlers: Jim Baker, Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes. But it is Mr. Bush who seeks his end through their means.

Lying is one of the means. Consider the Bush campaign's emphatic use of the case of Willie Horton, the black murderer who raped a white woman while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison.

Every one of those statements is a lie. It was not a ''Dukakis furlough program'' but one started by his Republican predecessor as Governor, Frank Sargent, in 1972. Mr. Dukakis did not make the decisions on who should get a furlough. Of the 268 prisoners who fled or overstayed their furloughs in the last 10 years only 4 were ''murderers.''

The ad is more broadly deceptive than its particular false statements. Its purpose is to suggest that Mr. Dukakis, as Governor, has been permissive toward crime and insensitive toward its victims. The facts are to the contrary.

In the most recent five years reported, the crime rate dropped more sharply in Massachusetts than in any other industrial state. The homicide rate in the state, without capital punishment, is 3 per 100,000 residents, less than half the national rate. In 1986 the National Organization for Crime Victims praised Governor Dukakis for his creation of a ''victims' bill of rights.''

But the facts have been overwhelmed by the Mephistophelean skill of Messrs. Baker, Atwater and Ailes in playing on emotions in their advertising. The furlough commercial, with all its crude distortions, has been enormously effective in this campaign.

A poll by Louis Harris found that 60 percent of the voters surveyed remembered the furlough ad. Most thought it ''too negative'' - but effective. Since that advertising started, Harris found a rise from 52 to 63 percent in those who thought Governor Dukakis was ''soft on crime.''

Most political campaigns contain exaggerations and deceptions. What is special about the Bush campaign is its use of smears to attack the character, the person of the opponent. From the Republican Convention on, the aim has been to portray Mr. Dukakis as unpatriotic, soft on crime, somehow alien and strange.

There is an element of nativism in it - that strain, running through American history, of hatred for people of a different origin or religion. Loretta Lynn, the country singer, was with Vice President Bush when he campaigned in central Illinois last month. Speaking of Mr. Dukakis, she said, ''Why, I can't even pronounce his name!'' The crowd roared with glee. Mr. Bush said nothing.

The Bush handlers maintain, with a straight face, that their emphasis on the Willie Horton case has nothing to do with race. Their own TV ad does not show Mr. Horton. But other pro-Bush commercials and fliers do.

A lot of Democrats are critical of Governor Dukakis for not dealing effectively with the campaign of character assassination. Yes, he has been ineffectual; we can imagine, by way of contrast, how John F. Kennedy would dispose of such smears. But it does seem unjust to blame the victim.

If Vice President Bush gains the White House with the help of the McCarthy tactics, he evidently plans to govern as a more moderate figure, not sneering at civil liberties. So his friends expect, at least.

But will it be so easy to slip on a gentler, kinder image? I doubt it. The extreme right is already firing shots across his bow - The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, warning Mr. Bush's friend, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, to be more like Ed Meese. Jesse Helms will not like it if a President Bush comes on as a moderate.

And there is the question of what happens to the individual who sacrifices everything to ambition. St. Matthew put it: ''For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?''